Tag Archives: attorney time and billing software

When you were in law school, you probably assumed you’d spend your days practicing law. Unfortunately the reality of running any business is there are a host of other administrative details that take time away from the core function of the organization. If you spend too much of your day…

Is your law practice ready for an audit? Law firms are often the target of ethics inquiries and you need to be sure you can back up all of your financial transactions with an unimpeachable paper trail. Of course nowadays the paper trail often isn’t paper, and billing software for…

Computers aren’t going to replace lawyers anytime soon, but legal software is critical to an efficient practice. Most firms use some kind of attorney time and billing software but not all packages are created the same. Some billing software doesn’t have the trust accounting features modern law firms need, and…

Technology has helped streamline the modern law practice, but software tools can hurt your firm if used incorrectly. Legal billing and accounting software like Easy TimeBill gives you the option of emailing invoices to your clients, but should you? Emailed invoices have a number of advantages for your practice: Low…

Law firms, like any business, depend on client referrals to generate new business. However unlike other industries, your customers aren’t usually qualified to judge whether or not you are a good attorney. Your image is going to have as much or more to do with client satisfaction as your legal…

Trust account funds must be managed and maintained separately but it is neither practical nor cost effective to open separate accounts. One reason for this is the need to receive or remit monies on multiple matters in one check. Easy TimeBill attorney time and billing software with the optional Easy…

Don’t make the mistake of dismissing alternate billing as something only for simple “file a couple of forms” cases. Law firms are creating flat fee arrangements for matters of all types and clients love it. Easy TimeBill billing software for lawyers is a critical tool for creating a fee structure…

Retainers are the cornerstone of many legal billing arrangements. However collecting, distributing and managing those retainers is not as easy as it might appear. Attorneys use legal billing and accounting software to automate the process and improve the practice’s financial position. Manual retainer management is a lot of work. Attorneys…

Everyone agrees the economy is recovering, so why talk about recession proofing now? Because you don’t patch your leaky roof when it’s raining. You wait for the weather to clear. Now is the perfect time for companies to leverage technology such as Easy TimeBill attorney time and billing software to…

Nobody likes to pay their lawyers. After all, attorneys are all rich people with mansions and yachts and million dollar expense accounts, right? That’s news to a lot of struggling lawyers. Ignoring overdue accounts will put you out of business, but being too aggressive upsets the client and damages the…

You may not realize how expensive it is to send out invoices. In addition to postage you are paying for stationery and printer toner as well as the time it takes the staff to print bills and stuff envelopes and the storage space you need to keep your copies of…

Work or expenses not billed is lost money. Although a few dollars here and there may not seem like much, if you are missing expenses regularly that it quickly builds into a large loss of revenue. Too many attorneys use haphazard methods to track hours, which ultimately causes them to…

Are you one of those rich attorneys who lights his cigars with $100 bills? Probably not unless you live in a cartoon. Real life attorneys know better than to waste money on something that ridiculous and yet a shocking number of practices are doing exactly that by not making full…

Attorneys need to present a professional image in everything from office decor to physical appearance to correspondence. Every letter or invoice produced by your attorney time and billing software sends a message about your firm and you don’t want that message to be, “I’m running this business out of my…

An important case might involve several attorneys, each handling a specialized component of the matter. Each of those attorneys is supported by paralegals, secretaries, accountants and others. How can you easily and accurately account for all those people in your legal billing and accounting software? Manual time tracking nightmare Trying…

Some law firms take only a narrow range of cases, but most practices prefer the financial stability of diversification. Different cases are suited to different fee structures and it is important for law firms to choose attorney time and billing software able to handle all of the practice’s billing needs.…

Some small law practices tend to dismiss software tools as something for the big boys. They make the assumption that a small practice is simpler so doesn’t need sophisticated attorney time and billing software but that’s not true, especially when it comes to managing trusts. Small Law Firm – Large…

Attorneys are privy to sensitive client information and have an obligation to protect that information from theft. Failing to do so is not only a great disservice to your clients, but can get your firm into a serious liability situation. Modern cloud-based billing software for lawyers makes it easier than…

Experienced attorneys advise law school students who want to form solo practices right after graduation that it’s best to work for a large law firm first. This allows new attorneys to learn the ins and outs of the business of practicing law and the realities of handling clients, filing documents…

Settle in, boys and girls, for a little story. It’s a scary story but don’t worry–it has a happy ending. It’s a moralistic little tale about something that happened to one of our colleagues, but doesn’t have to happen to your lawyer billing software. This gentleman has his vital computer…

Large law firms can hire teams of specialists to handle everything from balancing the books to maintaining the office computers to making the coffee. Unfortunately small firms, especially single-attorney practices, can’t afford to bring on a host of employees. The good news is that these small businesses can get the…

Automating your law office allows you to serve more clients and generate more revenue. You have many choices in billing software for lawyers and of course we think that Easy Time Bill is the ideal option. But don’t take our word for it. Evaluate the products and decide which one…

Computers are supposed to make our lives easier. Unfortunately they often don’t. Many software packages are confusing and hard to use. They have such steep learning curves that it’s faster to scribble a few notes on paper than spend an hour figuring out how to do it with a computer.…

We often tout the flexibility of the cloud versions of our software. You can get access to client and practice information from your office, your home, the courthouse, a coffee shop or anywhere else. However just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should! Tools like cloud-based time and…

It is the appearance of misconduct rather actual misconduct that can sink a legal practice. Attorneys have to be very careful how they conduct business since an innocent blunder can trigger at best a bad public image and at worst criminal charges or disbarment. Dedicated legal billing and accounting software…

Laptops were a huge boon to law firm productivity, allowing attorneys and other law firm staff to work from anywhere. It gave them the flexibility to adjust their work to their schedules now that they had access to attorney time and billing software places other than the office. However, today…

Have you ever used software so complicated that you had to hire a consultant to teach you how to use it? And how did that work out for you? When it comes to desired features in legal billing and accounting software, “horribly complicated” isn’t at the top of the list.…

Most attorneys understand that when it comes to ethics, perception is reality. An honest attorney can still get in trouble if it even appears that something questionable has happened. When it comes to ethics, attorneys can be presumed guilty until proven innocent. This is true in all aspects of legal…

The legal profession is a mobile one. Attorneys often meet with clients over lunch, at client homes, in conference rooms and, of course, in court. Lawyers accrue billable hours as well as running up expenses such as meals and mileage. Tracking these expenses for accurate billing can be a headache.…

We have loyal Easy TimeBill customers who’ve been with Easy Soft for many years. They’ve used our attorney time and billing software from version to version. Nowadays when it’s time to upgrade the software or renew a license they can choose to continue using the desktop version or to convert…

The transition to cloud software makes some attorneys nervous. Client confidentiality is core to the legal practice, especially for tasks such as trust fund accounting. Is it really safe to use cloud-based legal billing and accounting software? Absolutely. In fact, it’s probably safer than using desktop tools. Think about it…

Some of the most sensitive information an attorney handles is in the practice’s billing software. Although Easy TimeBill has built-in security features, users can make the legal billing and accounting software more secure. Remember that any security chain is only as strong as its weakest link, so follow all of…

Even a one-person law firm has to manage multiple trust matters through a single account, the dreaded IOLTA. Even though the monies are all in one account, every single penny has to be tracked separately so the firm doesn’t accidentally–or purposely!–“borrow” from one matter to pay expenses on another. It…

If you have multiple users accessing Easy TimeBill, then you probably don’t want everyone to be able to do everything. You don’t want to give any one user more authority than necessary because that weakens the overall security of any legal billing and accounting software. You wouldn’t give every person…

Paralegals are vital components of any medium to large law office. They have the knowhow to take on some of an attorney’s more routine duties at a much lower cost to the practice and the client. However attorneys need to judge whether a task is appropriate to a paralegal’s ability…

You can’t run a law practice without a computer, but what kind of computer do you need? You can look at the system specs of attorney time and billing software but there is more to a system than the speed of the processor. One basic question is whether it is…

Businesses print their own checks because it’s quick, easy and cheap. Financial applications such as Easy Soft’s legal billing and accounting software have the capability built in so you don’t have to mess with formats and spacing trying to set it up yourself. Although we try to make the process…

Maintaining a law firm’s accounts is more complicated than balancing a checkbook. A typical practice needs to monitor not just a single account but four critical balances: unbilled, unpaid, operating retainer and trust retainer. The unbilled balance is the amount entered into the business’s records but not yet sent to…